10.
Persona 4: Dancing All Night ; Usually I'm not one to perform autofellatio, metaphorically speaking, but the characters in this game, lord. They're very good at it. The game takes place some time after Persona 4. By then the characters have broken free from their weaknesses and angst and whatnot. Yu's a nice dude but dude you gotta lay off the Kool-Aid when it comes to yourself and your teammates. No one on the planet gives two hoots how you guys have grown as characters.
Now the gameplay's actually good. I'm not good enough at rhythm games to start playing on harder difficulties, but I was doing alright on Normal. I could see noticeable improvements as I played when I started doing songs on Hard. Unfortunately, I'm still a scrub by GAF standards because I can count on one hand the number of the songs I can play on All Night which is the highest difficulty.
This section's for Rise because I love her and she's 99% of the reason I bought this game at launch. I would have bought it on sale otherwise. Her song choices and dancing are so awesome. My fiery little devil. Gonna miss Rise so much, no joke
The game does repeat a lot of songs with different remixes though. I wonder how Secret Base would have sounded like if someone got their hands on it and remixed some vocals in. Everyone else's dancing though. Chie looks like a goof with her kungfu moves. Naoto's okay. Yosuke's okay. Teddie sucks. Yu told me Kanji lacks finesse in his dancing because he rocks them power moves. That's alright, I'll buy it. Kanami's good, as expected of an idol. Nanako's cute, The only time Yukiko dances well is in the OP when she's spinning around. Them legs umph. She looks good in the OP when she's standing too. Yu's good. The only time the cast is right in giving each other metaphorical handjobs is when they praise his dancing. It makes ME want to learn how to dance.
9.
Atelier Shallie: Alchemists of the Dusk Sea ; The Atelier series is mostly known for having an amazing heck aesthetic in the games. Cute girls everywhere. Broad range of colors are employed. Crafting system is simple to understand, harder to master. Keep listing all the positives but the positives fade to nothing when you bring up "time limits." We've had time limits in these games for years but Shallie loses them. Suddenly, people are interested. Go check the threads. I ain't gonna do it but the thirst is real to rid the world of time limits.
Time limits are a good thing when done right. They're needed to push the player to plan ahead. Lots of things in the game takes time to do with a finite amount of days. The games have been getting lenient with its time limits, so I'm not entirely surprised it got to this point of forgoing them. Shallie loses all of this urgency with no time limit in place. Story-wise, it doesn't even make any sense. The main character, Shallistera, has been sent by her village to fix the water crisis. Water's important, yeah. But there's no time limit! I can take as many years as I want to finish this game. By that point, the village's all dust and bones. Now the other main girl, Shallotte, she's got another good reason why no time limits makes as much sense as steak skewered on popsicles. It's kinda spoiler-y but kinda isn't. Bring back strict time limits, Gust.
I'll handwave the story related time limit things outta here. The rest of the game is as good as I'd want them to be. The combat's the best out of the series right now. The music's as orgasmic as its predecessors. The characters are just there, some are good and the others are okay. No one's irritable. Escha's back <3 Shallotte's so hyper and bubbly, I enjoyed her presence on-screen a lot. Sailor fuku costumes are my jam, and she rocks them.
8.
Halo 5: Guardians ; I don't understand tech, but I do understand FPS and Halo 5's got a solid 60. Gunplay feels amazing. Game looks really good too. Rest of the world doesn't agree, but I'm not the rest of the world. I like all the Halo games, but 5's the closest one to reach the affection I have for 2.
343i, why on earth would you let THAT happen in the campaign. You know, the thing with the Warden. Inexcusable. It's bad game design because while I could ignore it if he got new tricks, he didn't. He's the same fight all throughout. If you're going to repeat bosses, raise the difficulty every time. The player's gun skills improve as they proceed through the campaign. Should have scaled Warden to that.
I was never any good at Halo multiplayer, so I won't get into that. I guess I could stomach getting wrecked every encounter because I had the luxury of laughing it up with my buddies near me with Halo 2 when we were younger. Reality sucks because local play is dead and it's all online now. I don't have the time nor fortitude to actually get better though. Got too many games I haven't finished.
7.
Senran Kagura 2: Deep Crimson ; Bidding farewell to a series is something that shouldn't really have to happen. It's going to happen though because this is the last SK game I'll play unless we get another 2D SK. 2D is dead, brehs. In the first 30 minutes I almost wrote this game off because it felt entirely off to Senran Kagura Burst, its closest relative in the series. Dodging didn't seem right, likewise with attacking. But you get used to it like a lot of things. I'm not sure if I like 1 or 2 better, but 2 is fun enough that it makes my ballot. The story is heavily cut down from 1 in detail. The exposition is mostly gone now, but I'll chalk that up to 1 needing to flesh out the characters. 2 starts with the top-heavy established characters from the first so the only story left to tell are the new characters in Naraku and Kagura.
The first game revolved around chasing, following up on launched enemies with air combos, but this one seemed to be all about ground battles. After clearing the story, I used Yomi for clearing the Yoma's Nest, a multi-level pit of enemies with specific objectives. Gah she's amazing. She uses a great sword and some sorta crossbow. Attacks are slow but impactful when they connect. I just love Ai Kayano, her voice is so HNNNNG. Chasing is awful in this game otherwise I'd have used Hibari a lot more. Forgive me, Yuka Iguchi. But I still love your voice although I don't hear it much anymore
There's also a photo mode where you can dress up the girls and put them in totally provocative poses like spreading their legs and stuff AND have them wear matching facial expressions to beat. I didn't use it though. Honest.
6.
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt ; I didn't play Witcher 1 and 2. Sorry. I probably could have read some summaries to familiarize myself with Geralt and the other recurring characters. Got the game since I needed a western game to play during the first half of the year Hats off to CDPR for succeeding because TW3's good.
Combat's still bad though. That thought of mine isn't going to disappear. The lore actually went through the trouble of telling me witchers hunt their contracts with masterful displays of ballerina moves and crudely concocted potions made with griffin poop and pubic hair from a 50-year-old virgin. Not buying it. Like Shallie, the disconnect is real and can't be ignored. The battle system does not feel good to play and that's all there is to it. Turning up the difficulty was a band-aid. I was more attentive but still going through the motions. Not putting with this farce any longer, I lowered the difficulty down to brain dead levels. I'm in it for the story now.
The quest lines are aight. If I could sit here and have to think about the possible consequences of my actions, then the writers deserve praise. Like how was I supposed to know X would have died if I let Y happen? And no, I don't want to know I was supposed to know that. If there's one thing I'd change in one and only playthrough of The Witcher 3, I'd be faithful. Unfortunately, the game went full realistic on me and I went for both girls. Shucks. You can reverse the gender and I'd feel the same. If I knew, I would have gone for Triss. Oh man, I missed out on the Triss train. I still saw most of the possible sex scenes with all the girls though. Would have been awesome if I earned a harem in the end.
5.
Etrian Odyssey 2 Untold: The Fafnir Knight ; Atlus' premier series is back with a remake of one of the old EOs. The relentless dungeon crawling + floor travel, Yuzo Koshiro gracing us plebs with his heavenly music once again, the relentless battles, all still here.
I didn't play the original EO2 so no comment.
4.
Xenoblade Chronicles X ; Uh uh uh yeah, yeah yeah YEAH
When I first set foot on Primordia, I was like YO!
Then I got my Skell and I was like YOOO!!
Finally, I got my flight module so my Skell could fly and I was YOOOOOO!!!
3.
Stella Glow ; Imageepoch, defunct JRPG savior, has finally made a game better than Fate/Extra. A strategy game that definitely punches above its weight.
Nowhere near Jeanne D'Arc levels of easy peasy difficulty but it's not super hardcore either. The developers did a fine job crafting an intriguing world with easy to pick up gameplay. There's no deep numbers game I gotta play that would make even hardened accountants go numb. It's right up there with Fire Emblem in accessibility. High defense means less damage. High attacks means attacks have more oomph behind them. High move for an easier time to get to key areas. Hit enemies on their side for improved accuracy and behind them for higher damage. The maps are small at first and they get larger as enemy counts start to rise. The strategy foundations are there from the start, they compound as you make progress and they stay all the way until you see the credits.
The game boasts a large cast of characters and through social links, you can learn what makes them tick. Serves as a nice break in between fighting. In your first run, you won't have enough time to interact with everybody but NG+ removes this limit. I do like micromanaging the time in games like this, but I didn't think about it too much here since there wasn't enough time. I had a clear set of favorites to focus on so I missed out on a lot of other characters' development. A lot of the girls are cute. And the story, it got really depressing at times. I don't wanna talk about it. It's spoilers, and it makes me really sad.
2.
Fatal Frame: Maiden of Black Water ; Probably the worst reviewed game on my list if it weren't for people docking points in Senran Kagura 2 because hurrdurr it's all pandering and no gameplay. Apparently has clunky everything. Clunky story, clunky controls, clunky atmosphere, clunky depictions of women in scary settings, all clunky.
But that's what I love about it. I don't think any of those things are clunky. Fatal Frame's always been stuck in this weird place where other games moved on to supposed improved gameplay or stuck in the past with outdated gameplay. It does whatever it does really well. Whatever that something is I do not know or care enough to think about.
Controls, controls, controls. When a ghost is in my vicinity and I get hurt from its attack because my character took too long to turn properly despite having made the proper input to avoid it but it happened anyway, I won't blame the game. I'm sold, why not. Not everything has to control and respond as well a 3D Mario game. I like how the character moves and sway and turn and pivot like someone's anchored their body to a rock.
As for GamePad use, KT done good. Your character is on their merry way to collect some key for a locked door because of course there'd be a locked door that impedes progress and poof, a ghost appears. Let's bring out the camera since these ghosts are so photogenic. Using the GamePad screen, it's almost like you're using the Camera Obscura yourself. As you fight a ghost, you'll see bits and pieces of the ghost right beside the main body. Those are weaknesses and taking shots of ghosts with those pieces in the shot helps deal more damage. You're not limited to holding the GamePad horizontally as you're able to hold it vertically if you aren't seeing weaknesses normally. I haven't held it that way often because it's uncomfortable and I'm fine on missing a few weaknesses to deal with baddies. Holding the GamePad as is feels good though. When you've got a good feel on a ghost and its attacks, you can take advantage of Shutter Chance to really crank out some damage for a couple seconds. Really fun spamming that R button away as you watch the damage numbers on your screen and the enemy HP fall significantly.
What's different for this Fatal Frame than the others is the game isn't entirely connected. Instead of being an adventure game with a beginning and an end, Fatal Frame V is broken up into chapters where you are free to play the next chapter or replay old ones. The game isn't hard enough to force players to search every nook and cranny for the best possible films and items to use against a potentially strong ghost they might face later on. It's kind of a waste because the game is hauntingly gorgeous and there isn't a real reason to explore for items. I'm not the type of guy who runs around looking for eyecandy in games because it's a waste of time. I need a reason to be where I'm at. There are instances where ghosts may appear in some far-off place and that would be a good reason to explore and take in the atmosphere but they're very few in number. Every chapter starts off with a predetermined set of items. You can ease yourself into ghost busting by buying additional items and film. And with that point, exploring in every chapter is rent pointless. For me, yeah.
Character design, man. Everyone is so gorgeous. The girls, the one guy, everyone. A lot of people find this questionable. The game is set in a creepy shrine, dreary forest, house that hides itself under the cover of fog and here are these beautiful people rocking stylized hair, clothes like they're going on a date. I don't find this to negate the atmosphere. When I'm tired of looking at some creepy places, I'll just look at the characters. It's a nice balance.
All in all, Fatal Frame V inconceivably isn't the sum of its parts. It's got awful, bad, okay, good, and great parts. It's a product of some alternate universe where 2 + 2 equals 100. The math doesn't add up, but Fatal Frame makes it work, and I wouldn't have it any other way.
1.
Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate ; The MH team has done it again. I mean, if there is a dev team in Capcom dedicated to bringing us an MH every once in a while. Gaming is bigger than ever and at the same time harder than ever to find a game that expertly combines calculating combat with an addicting loot system. The story took you to a hip-and-happening desert city, a beach rivaling that of Brazil's, underneath the land with nothing but fire and brimstone, and a mystic village high above the clouds. The lances poke true, the hunting horns sing harmoniously, and the great sword cleaves through bodies. 400 hours under my belt and every second was a blast to play.
At first, you're a rookie hunter tasked boring activities like gathering mushrooms and herbs and hunting small game. Your equipment is garbage. But like the previous games, you have access to weapons of each type right away so you can find something that'll strike your fancy. I normally main the lance, which no one ever uses. No one ever uses it because it's not very mobile at first but why turtle yourself when you can unsheathe, run up to a monster, and unleash thy fury (of thunder). As you trudge through the small time stuff, slowly but surely, you prove yourself to the higher ups of the residents. They see your potential as the answer to their problems. The slayer of giants. That's you, hunter.
You could say a lot of negative things about the 3DS' screen and I'd go ahead and agree with every single one of them. But it's good enough to see all the detail in monster animation they almost mimic real animals. I almost feel bad killing them as a result. Before they notice you, they're out doing what it is animals do in the wild. They'd be eating less fortunate animals, sleeping, grazing, the works. Sometimes they scan their environment because they heard or seen something they shouldn't have. And when they see you, they perk up. This adds a nice dose of personality in the monsters you're soon to carve up for body parts. When they see you run up to them and they feel your killing intent, they tense their body and follow up with a roar. I kinda compare it to the gun you hear in sprinting competitions. It's show time. So here you are, running around like a headless chicken until you get a feel for its behavior. Like when I see one perform a tail swipe. The tail is an obvious hitbox, but what else? Oh, I notice the head moves very sharply in the opposite direction. That could hurt if I were positioned there. Okay, let's fast forward a bit and now the monster is exhausted. As it should be as they've been constantly moving their sharp body parts and breathing fire for ten minutes. Drools drip down their mouth. Attacks that take a lot of energy to perform now fail. Let's take the Tigrex, an agile half tiger, half T. Rex old favorite. At its peak, it can do three back-to-back charges. When it's tired, it does its lunge and when it turns around to do another it stumbles on itself and for a bit, is helpless to attacks. Alright, poke, smash, crush and now the monster is on its last legs. The monster limps to get away from the group of pint-sized humans in an attempt to recover at its nest. Now this when I feel like a real scumbag. Sleeping monsters receive a damage multiplier so it's in your best interest to use your strongest attacks. So when your lvl 3 Great Sword charge connects and you hear that death cry, I don't know. Awful to hear like I really did kill an animal. Then it slumps over and now you can crouch over to carve it.
Tri and 3 Ultimate, the previous generation games before 4U, had underwater battles, a way to introduce 360 degree battle in hunting. Now we have verticality. Almost every piece of area in the map provides players a platform (hah) to jump off cliffs to attack monsters. A cliff too high needs vines or anything that can be grabbed onto to scale. Terrain barely taller than your character can be scaled naturally just by running up to them with almost no loss in speed. The game offers a lot in movement and it's great that there's not much to slow you down. So far, all you can really do with the higher places is run off it to do an attack in mid-fair to an enemy to mount it. Some button mashing shenanigans take place. Succeeding topples the monster for a while so you can let loose with attacks. What's dumb is anyone attacking the monster getting a back treatment screws up the mounting. There'd be a small interlude where the others are just standing there waiting. Looks goofy while I'm holding on to dear life hahah. Ultimately (stop) though, fighting from high places isn't really a improvement to underwater fighting so much as an alternative. We lost true 360 battles to being able to use verticality in a lot of more areas, as opposed to saving only two or three pools of water in a 10-area map. It's a fair trade, all things considering. Not a lot of monsters took advantage of the terrain though, but whatever. The only ones for sure are the monkey? ape? gorilla? monsters who'd hang off the grown out vine platforms. These guys would scratch their bodies while idle. Total shame I have to kill them after. They're just chilling, man.
And you repeat this cycle of hunting again and again. You forge weapons and armor from the beasts you've slayed, all to slay even bigger menaces for their parts. And every time, you make the connection from human to animal. Hunt or be hunted. Don't get me wrong though. It's exhilarating to get stronger and stronger. It's still a game and it's not like I'm tempted to run out and kill some dogs or whatever. It's a power trip and I'm all over it in my virtual world. Monsters that used to take 15 minutes to defeat now take two minutes with stronger equipment. At the beginning of your journey you start out with a hammer made of sticks and stones and by the end have one that expels devastating heat that permeates the vicinity with every swing. This all sounds like grind, grind, grind. Ahh, but it's not a grind when it's so dang fun.
I still like 3 Ultimate best because it has Agnaktor, a giant fire lizard that hardens its body with lava, and this doesn't but it's still better than the vast majority of games released this year. Easy.
x.
Atelier Ayesha Plus: The Alchemist of Dusk ; Hard mode was fun. Great way to start a game with enemies having higher HP, less items produced when synthesizing, items are more expensive, etc. Finished the original game on PS3 though.
x.
Story of Seasons ; Harvest Moon games are huge timesinks. I haven't been able to spend a great deal of time playing one since the HMs on GBC. You might say I haven't spent much time on this game if I haven't married someone yet! Elise, I'll take your hand in marriage someday.
x.
Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor 2 Record Breaker ; This would absolutely break into my GotY list, but I make it a point to not include games I've played way before. Atlus did a great job bringing in a set of talented voice actors and actresses to bring the already full-of-life characters of Devil Survivor 2 into full-er life. The Triangulum arc, which adds on to the original story, is awesome since it's more Devil Survivor. Miyako is new to the arc and is so cute <3
x.
Lord of Magna: Maiden Heaven ; Read that subtitle out loud. It's genius. If you add RPG elements to Wii Sports bowling, you'll get this game. Fun and simple adventure with a rounded cast. Trixie's confession scene is still my Miiverse banner picture <333
x.
Rare Replay ; Didn't get to play the games I wanted to all that much. Just ran out of time. While I have no interest in the vast majority of the 8 and 16-bit games, I feel it'd be insulting to the developers to not add this in for the more modern 3D games.
x.
Hatsune Miku: Project Mirai DX ; I just adore the music and chibi vocaloids.
The World is Mine
Reverse Rainbow
Piano x Forte x Scandal
x.
Yoshi's Woolly World ; Enjoyed this almost as much as Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze which is one of the finest 2D platformers to release. I'll finish eventually.
x.
Rise of the Tomb Raider ; Even I get in the mood for movie games too. Also serves as a nice murder simulator with an attractive female lead.
x.
The Fruit of Grisaia ; The MC is funny with his dialogue. Nothing gets past him. Girls are all cute. Can't decide who is my favorite. JB's my favorite, but you can't sex her until the second game, so my favorite is either Yumiko or Michiru with Amane trailing behind.
x.
The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky Second Chapter ; Everything is freaking amazing, but the battle system leaves much to be desired like its predecessor. So boring. Otherwise, Estelle is as adorable as ever, Schera the hottie, I just lose myself in the music, the story is engrossing with the emerging of a mysterious dark society and what with happened to old characters.
games 1
games 2
games 3
And to finish, RIP, Satoru Iwata. Held the fort down during some of my favorite gaming generations. Thank you.
